


Finding Home

by Fyre



Category: Mirrormask
Genre: Gen, Valentine - Freeform, mirrormask - Freeform, mirrorworld, tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, you find what you were looking for when you least expect it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vocal_bard (atrickstertype)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atrickstertype/gifts).



> This was my very first Mirrormask fic, and Valentine has proved to be one of the more challenging characters I have written recently. That didn't stop it being a lot of fun :) I hope you like it.

There are three very important things to remember. I don’t mean important things like ‘Don’t hug a sphinx’ or silly, obvious stuff like that. I mean _important_ things that really make it easier to be me.

The first one is always wear your mask. You don’t want to be all wiggle-nosed and expressive. Imagine being able to cross your eyes? I’ve heard stories, you know. People who have eyes that move all on their own. Unnatural.

So yes. Masks. Masks are good. Just as long as you have a good one that is yours.

The second thing is to always know where the next ball is going to drop. I was born and raised a juggler by my mother, who wasn’t my mother, but was a good juggler. Actually, she wasn’t a good juggler. She was very good at throwing things. I stopped catching them on my head and caught them in my hands instead. It was a very practical lesson.

It’s a skill, juggling. I can juggle all sorts: bowls, sticks, fish. Fish are tricky. Sometimes, they just won’t stop babbling away at you. Complain, complain, oh I need to get back in the water, I need to have a swim. It’s a skill to ignore the distractions.

When you know where the next ball will drop, you’re ready to be a juggler.

The most important thing about being me though is that I’m a very important man.

Only very important men have towers, and I have one.

I don’t think I started out as important. Maybe I did, and I was secretly stolen away to this life of towers and juggling. I was bought, in a basket, from a man. My mother-who-isn’t-my-mother only wanted the basket, she said. All the same, it was a very good basket. She let it have the spare bed when it wasn’t being used and kept it tucked in warm and snug to stop it getting cold.

I was always a bit jealous of the basket. Not that the floor wasn’t comfortable. I even had a pillow once. But it had all the best blankets.

I left to join a juggling troupe, which is only a bit of a lie. I left because the door was closed on me, but I joined a juggling troupe. Well, a juggling pair. Well. Sort of. Me and a purple hat with a feather. Which was probably a lot brighter than some of the jugglers I’ve juggled with since then. Some of them can’t even tell which way up a ball is meant to go.

We made our way in the world, avoiding the wild sphinxes, and making sure not to get on the wrong side of the gargoyles. They’re all right, gargoyles, but if you catch them before they’ve had their morning dolly mixtures, they will be a bit grumpy. A wise precaution when wandering the world is to always carry some pamphlets and a pack of dolly mixtures. It covers both eventualities, but you just have to remember which pocket each is in, so you don’t nibble the wrong one. Pamphlets can give you a very nasty paper cut.

I had a small room then, but this isn’t a story about how I got the room. It was quite a boring room, actually, so you really don’t want to hear about that. I juggled, the hat hatted and together we got paid for our entertainment, until the feather decided it would do better performing solo and vanished one windy night.

The hat and I tried to carry the act on, but really, I was doing all the work, so the hat had to go to the home for retired hats. It was a sad farewell, but if it hadn’t been for that, I would never have met my tower.

It was a moonlit night, although it would tell you otherwise. It had to be moonlight, because it was night, so logically, there really couldn’t be sunlight, could there? But anyway, it was lit up, and sitting in a solemn, towerish way.

I’d seen towers before. Everyone does. But the big secret about towers is that you don’t know they’re towers until they show you they are, and it takes a very special and important person to be shown that a tower’s a tower by a tower. Otherwise, you might just think it’s a tall pile of rocks or even a little mountain. Towers are very picky about who they belong to, and they don’t show themselves to just anybody. That’s how you know you’re important.

I was walking and juggling. Or maybe it was juggling and walking. Whichever it was, it became bruising when I walked straight into the wall of the thing that turned out be my tower. That’s something they don’t tell you about juggling in motion: watching where the next ball will drop is one thing, watching where you’re going it a whole other thing.

I collected my balls up. It’s only good manners, after all.

It had been a long day and no one was about to be entertained, so I sat down beside the tower, and watched the moon for a while. I sometimes imagine juggling the sun and the moon. The whole world would be spinning with zigzags of light and shadow. Trouble is they’re both too far away, and I’ve never seen a ladder big enough to reach them both.

Without even thinking, I started juggling with the balls. It’s easy when you know how, up and over, and round and under. I even started humming the best tune for juggling, wishing I had an accompanist, but they’re harder to come by than decent jugglers these days. One sniff of a dropped ball, and they run off to accompany the trapeze-artists. They get such high praise, as well. No one else notices that trapeze artists are just people who are good at not falling. That’s nothing special. I don’t fall all the time, and no one applauds me and pays to watch me do it. So what if they don’t fall from a high-wire? The same rule applies!

But anyway, I was sitting by the tower, juggling and humming, and the moon - definitely the moon, and not the sun - was shining.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice right away, but after a while, I realised something was humming along with my humming. It didn’t hum the same tune as me, but it hummed a long, shivering note that made the ground shake. Like any good juggler would, given an invisible giant hummer making the earth quake, I dropped all the balls and tripped over my feet and my coat and my feet again trying to get up.

The hum turned into a rumble, and if it hadn’t been so huge, it would have sounded like laughing.

I spun around, and almost tripped over again when a door opened in the front of the tower. I thought it was a giant rock until that happened, and then, there was a door and _obviously_ it was a tower, and had always been a tower.

I waited for the owner of the tower to stick their head out or tell me to go away, but no one did. I stared at the door. Even though it didn’t have eyes, the door stared back. I kept staring and didn’t even look away as I collected my balls up again.

“You’re a tower.”

The door opened wider. Inside, it looked warm and brightly lit.

Just to be on the safe side, I threw a pamphlet in.

No sphinxes was a good sign, because they get everywhere.

I looked around, and then tossed one of my balls through the doorway. The door stayed open.

“Oh no,” I said loudly, “I will have to go into the tower and get my ball back.”

I was in the tower in three steps, and before anyone could throw me out, I shut the door behind me and turned the key in the lock.

“Aha! Mine!”

The tower rumbled under my feet. Towers can’t speak, as everyone knows, but all the same, it told me I was welcome, and that it enjoyed my juggling. How many people can say that a tower has liked their juggling? Not many, I can tell you. My tower is a tower of taste, and it knows a good juggler when it sees one.

I pretended that I heard these things all the time, as I looked around the tower, but I felt more pleased than you can imagine. Even more than I did when I got my first accompanist and juggling partner. A tower! Liking my juggling!

It was a huge tower as well, with turrets and rooms and a pond in the attic and a cavern in the basement. There was even a little library with a few books. I put my pamphlets on the shelves too. I think the tower liked that as well.

It was a bit dusty, here and there, but I found a magnificent bedroom fit for a King with all the blankets and pillows a man could wish for. I took six of them off and left two on, because you really don’t want to spoil yourself with too many pillows and blankets the first time.

Skittles and balls and clothes ended in a heap on the floor, and I ended up in the bed, pulling the blankets right up and over my head. It was dark and cosy and warm and it was my tower now, with my bed and my blankets.

And even though towers really can’t talk, I know I heard it whisper, “Mine.”


End file.
